Sandy and Rachel were both up and running at 7:00 the next morning. By the time I dragged myself out to the kitchen in search of coffee, wondering why they were up given we had spent half the night screwing, they were dressed and downing a cup of coffee before they headed out.
"My god, don't you two sleep?" I asked, as Sandy handed me a cup of coffee.
"There's work to be done by us mere mortals," Sandy said.
"Right," Rachel joined in. "I need to get down to the bookstore."
"And I need to see what new problems my staff has uncovered while I was in London."
"And you need to paint," Rachel said. "We think you are an art god, but the rest of the world doesn't know about it yet."
"It's drawing. Pastels are more like crayons."
"Whatever. Here's the thing. Sandy and I have been up since 6:00, talking while you snoozed. We think you need to sell your drawings."
"Yes," Sandy joined in. "Hers and mine."
"Really," I asked. "Are you sure? What about your blue-nosed partners?"
"Fuck'em!" Sandy said. "They need me more than I need them. I've had conversations with three different head hunters in the last week."
"Right," Rachel said. "Jobs may be hard to come by for commercial artists, but not for tall leggy blondes who are expert accountants with extensive experience with the SEC or whoever it is she deals with."
"Did I get that right?" Rachel continued, looking to Sandy. "Is it the SEC? And what is the SEC?"
"Yes," Sandy said with a laugh. "You got it right and you don't need to know what they do."
"But really, Steven," she said looking at me now. "I want you to sell your art. I don't want us to have a relationship where I bring home all the bacon, and you are the house-husband. As for what people will think about my posing nude—like I said; fuck'em. The guys can lust after me, and their wives will just have to get used to it."
"Except for the wives that are lusting after you," Rachel said with a twinkle in her eye.
Sandy laughed, "That's okay, too, but now we have to get going," she said looking at her watch and then Rachel. They downed the last of their coffees and started for the door.
"But wait," I said. "What about us?"
"Us?" they said, more or less in unison as they stopped just short of the door and turned to look at me.
"Yes, us. I mean the three of us. How is that going to work?"
"Hopefully just like last night," Sandy responded. "It was marvelous."
"For how long?" I asked.
"Until it doesn't," she responded. "How else can a relationship work?"
"So we're a threesome?"
They both nodded at me. "You okay with that?" Sandy asked.
"Fuck yes! Can we go back to bed now?" I said, breaking into a broad smile.
"No!" they responded.
"We have to work," Sandy said.
"And you have to draw," Rachel said.
"There's more to life than sex," Sandy said.
Rachel gave her a confused look and asked, "Are you sure?"
Then they were gone, and I was sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee thinking about what I had gotten myself into. The words,
ménage a trois
were running through my head. It sounds exotic in French, but the reality was feeling a little scary just now.
"So," I asked myself, "what are the downsides to this arrangement?" I really couldn't find any beyond the risk that the relationship might blow up some day. But any relationship has that downside, so I couldn't see that as a problem. The only way to avoid that risk is to become a hermit. "So I guess it's all good," I told myself, but I still had this nagging feeling I didn't know what I was getting myself into.
I made myself some toast and jelly and another cup of coffee and then returned to my studio to pick up where I left off when the girls had walked in last night. There was a half-finished nude of Sandy in her tall, sexy heels and pearls that I wanted to finish this morning. Nothing else mattered right then.
I spent the next couple of weeks in my studio, more or less a hermit. I hadn't worked that hard in years. I didn't see much of Sandy and Rachel. Sandy was back in London much of the time. We had some great phone sex, but it wasn't near as good as the real thing. Rachel dropped by a couple of evenings with "chicken soup"; and the sex was really good. We worked at finding positions in which I could play with her luscious tits while we fucked. God, her tits are fun! But mostly I worked on producing pastels and sketches for a show.
Late one afternoon I took a break and dropped into Sherri's for a Scotch and a chat with Lisa. I mostly wanted to tell her to tell Howard I had solved my issues with my models, and I was working hard to produce enough finished product for a show. At Lisa's suggestion, I also agreed to have lunch with Howard and show him what I had produced to date. He came uptown, and we had a bite in Sherri's and then went to my studio.
By this time I had finished pastels that covered much of the walls, and there were sketches everywhere else including a good deal of the floor.
Howard walked back and forth in silence studying the walls and the floors. Finally he sat down in the armchair and spoke, "You've been busy. We better sell some of these. You're running out of room."
"Do you like what you see?"
"Yes, but there is one thing missing for a really good first-time show."
"What's missing?"
"A centerpiece."
"A centerpiece?" I asked.
"Yes. We need a large pastel of both women making love in a pose allowing the viewer to see the emotion each is experiencing. You've done it well for each of them in separate drawings, but I want it in one large drawing that I can center in the gallery. I want everyone who walks into the gallery to know immediately what this show is about."
"Which is?"
"The love affair between your wife and her cousin, of course. The viewers don't have to know who the models are or their relationship to you—at least not now. Later on, when you're famous, it will make great fodder for the gossip columnists. But right now my goal is to make sure their passion for each other is the first thing the customers see when they walk into the gallery. We will put some ridiculous price on that lead-in picture. It doesn't have to sell, but it will sell the rest of the remaining works."
"Can you do that for me?" he asked.
I sat thinking about the lead-in piece, trying to ignore what he said about gossip columnists. "How big is big?" I asked.
Howard quoted some dimensions that would be larger than life.
"Yeah . . . I think I can do that. But it will take me a couple of weeks. I may need another sitting with the models. Maybe not. We'll see." I was thinking out loud. "First I'll do a small sketch, and then if I like it, a small pastel, maybe 16 inches on the diagonal. That way I will know where I'm going. If you like the small version, I can then do the full-size one you want."
"Great. I don't want to start the publicity until you have the big one finished, so we are still a month or two out. The whole show is going to build around that piece of art. Meanwhile we need to decide what the rest of the show will include. You have more here than I can put up in a single show. Especially the sketches, and I definitely want to include some of the sketches. I will need to send Lisa and Sarah over here to pick the specific items for the show and arrange for framing. They are much better at that than I am."
"What about your commission? How is that going to work?"
"Oh, I'll have Lisa get our standard agreement to you. She handles all that detail for me."
"Okay, but she will have to deal with Sandy on it."
Howard gave me a confused look. "Your model?"
"She's also my accountant—and my wife."
"Oh yeah. I forgot about that. My new artists don't usually come equipped with an accountant. I s'pose you'll be telling me you have an agent next."
Howard jumped out of the armchair and started for the door. "Well, I'm off. Got a major customer to see. Not sure he works for your stuff, but maybe. I'm not gonna give him an advance-of-show shot though. He's too cheap to pay up for that. Besides, I want the art community's first look at your work to include everything—not just what's left after a few high rollers pick things over. Reputation first. Then sales. Remember that."
The big piece turned out to be more challenging than I expected. I made nearly a dozen sketches before I got one I was satisfied with. I abandoned the idea of drawing the girls in simultaneous climax. It was just too difficult to come up with a posture that was erotic and still loving when I had to catch the moment of climax. It may be that romantic love is suspended for a moment or two at the instant of sexual climax. Maybe it's just lust for that instant. Don't know about that. In any case, I changed the concept a bit.
Instead, I drew the girls naked and coiled around each other in post-coital bliss. Sandy was slouched on the couch, her legs spread and her drenched pussy glistening. Her head was back, her eyes closed, and she was smiling, just a little smile, with some ambiguity. Was it satisfaction, contentment, love for Rachel, or pride at how she had just satisfied Rachel or made Rachel satisfy her? I didn't know, and I didn't want the viewer to know either—not for sure. This wasn't a Mona Lisa smile. It was something else. More erotic, but with the same ambiguity.
Rachel was tucked under Sandy's arm, her head resting on her chest. Like Sandy, Rachel was smiling and her eyes were closed. Rachel's smile was pure love and satisfaction, or at least that is how I envisioned it.
One of Rachel's hands lay on Sandy's leg, palm up, as though it had just dropped from caressing a breast. The girls' hips were pressed firmly together. Rachel's leg, the one away from Sandy, was pulled up and bent at the knee, opening her gleaming sex to the viewer. Sandy had a hand near, but no longer on, Rachel's sex. Her fingers glistened with Rachel's juices.
It took me a few days to finish even the small pastel. When it was finished, I put it in my portfolio case and took it down to Sherri's Place to show Lisa. She was stunned by it.
